Bigger picture behind junior doctors dispute

Juniors doctors at a picket line outside St Thomas Hospital in London on 9 March 2016. Photograph: Mark Thomas/Rex/Shutterstock

Junior doctors are striking again this week in their battle with Jeremy Hunt over the new contract he has imposed on them. The people who are advising Jeremy Hunt include members of the South West Pay, Terms and Conditions consortium who, in their 2013 plans, proposed local rather than national pay negotiations, and major cuts in terms and conditions for the NHS workforce. These plans were thrown out by parliament at the time but seem to be the blueprint Jeremy Hunt is sticking to in the imposition of a new contract for junior doctors.

Cutting the wages bill is part of the privatisation process as it is necessary if future owners are to turn a profit. The consequences so far are the appalling problems of recruitment and retention we are now seeing, along with soaring bills for agency staff and serious gaps in staffing. The junior doctors dispute centres on the issue of terms and conditions because that is what they have a right to protest about, but the bigger picture is their main concern. What is happening to the NHS amounts to theft, as public services and assets are handed over to UK and foreign private companies.

On Friday, 11 March, the NHS bill, tabled by Caroline Lucas, is due its second reading in parliament. This cross-party bill aims to restore the NHS in England as a national universal service (which it still is in the rest of the UK) and has the support of an eminent list of signatories (Why we support the cross-party NHS bill, Letters, 5 March). I ask your readers to keep supporting the junior doctors and to investigate what is truly behind their dispute. Remember the Cameron promise of 2010 that there would be no top-down reorganisaton and decide if you can believe anything that the government says about the future of the NHS. For sure do not believe them when they say the NHS is not being privatised.Sue VaughanLittle Melton, Norfolk

• The imposition of the new contract for junior doctors is neither necessary nor wise. There is no evidence that this contract renegotiation is crucial to tackling the “weekend effect”; indeed the very hospitals that ministers praise for progress on seven-day working are doing this within the existing contract. More fundamentally, it is absurd to claim to want to improve out-of-hours care while denigrating and demoralising the very staff who are crucial to delivering that care. As two former medical directors of the NHS in England, we urge the government to recognise the long-term damage that this imposition will cause, and to reverse it. Junior doctors are right to resist the ill-considered actions of the secretary of state, and we would be on the picket lines this week if we were doctors in training.Dr Graham WinyardWinchester, HampshireDr Sheila AdamStaveley, Cumbria